Friday, August 11, 2017

2017 Willow Creek GLS -- Laszlo Bock -- Insights from Inside Google

(Here at the 2017 Willow Creek GLS to learn about leadership for Operation Christmas Child)

It’s an honor to be here today.When I was invited I wasn’t sure what the organization was
so I did some homework and realized this is a pretty big deal. My next thought
was that I’m not qualified to speak to this group.

Early in my career I found myself frustrated in my
work.I’ve had 14 or 15 different
kinds of job: tutor, teacher, librarian, baker, waiter at Olive Garden—every
place I worked there was a gap between the values the leaders talked about and
what they lived.That made me
angry and made me go down the path of human resources which got me hired by a
small start-up called Google.

The problem with human resources is that every single person
you work with things they know how to do your job better.My mission is: find the best people;
grow them as fast as possible; keep them at the company.

At the end of last year I left Google and started a company
called Humu—named for a fish—and our mission is to make work better for
everyone everywhere through science, learning and love.

I had this epiphany years ago and realized we spend more
time working than anything else in the world.We spend all our times with bozos someone else hired and it
seems the experience of work should be meaningful.

Google believed in open source—make everything public and
allow them to test it.They
believed if we open-sourced what we do on the people side we can do some
good.So I wrote this book called
“Work Rules”.

The one question I get when I talk about how to make work
better:You worked at Google but I
work at a small shop or I’m in another country, so how can this work for
me?I was thrilled to learn that
what I’m going to share works everywhere.We as human beings are fundamentally the same.We all want the same thing: happiness, meaning, to have a
voice in what we do.

Google was named best company to work for in 2007.I was on a panel with someone from
Wegman’s (who’d been in the top 5 for years.)Though Google and Wegman’s were very different, we agreed on
everything:treat your people
right and they will do right by you.

What I’m going to share with you works.

The most important thing:Give your work meaning.If your goal is to be #1 or #2, what do you strive for when
you get there?

--you need to have a mission that matters.Google’s missions was to organize the
world’s information and make it accessible and useful.

Survey of people to see how many have meaning in their
work.Looked at every type of
job:1/3 have meaning; 1/3 do it
just to make a living; 1/3 see it as a personal game.Across every field (even non-profits and ministry) this is
true.

Some people remember the duty but forget the joy.

Adam Grant is a professor who wrote a book called “Give and
Take”.Early in his career he
wanted to get tenure as a professor.He went to a call center that raised money for college
scholarships.He found they were
raising $1300 every week.He went
to the scholarship recipient and had them write essays about what the
scholarship did for them for the call center workers to read.The call center profits didn’t change
at all.Next he got
scholarship recipients to write essays about the MEANING of their college
experience and took those back to the call center to read.This time the profits rose to $3100 a
week because of being connected to meaning in the lives of human beings.Next he brought scholarship recipients
to the call center once a week and the profit rose to over $5000 a week.

Concrete ways to instill meaning;

--Figure out why you are doing the work you are doing and
post reminders to yourself

--Find the people around you and ask them what motivates
them. Find the people who are connected and have them tell their stories.

--Have people come in who are beneficiaries of what you do.

--Repeat the above again and again.

MEANING MATTERS

Next thing we’ll talk about is trust.Do you believe human beings are
fundamentally good or fundamentally evil?I’m going to assert people are good.Most organizations fail to trust their people.

What meetings happen we don’t know about?What goals are set we don’t know about?

Having a goal is important and you need to make sure people
know the goal.Publish the goals
and share results.

If you give people information about profit/loss they will
use it to make good decisions.Once in a while something will slip but if you treat people with trust
and respect they will repay you by being more creative and adding back more
value.

Professor at MIT explored productivity.Partnered with NIKE in Mexico and found
2 plants where each employee was making 80 T-shirts a day.Plant A—kept the samebut Plant B—let employees (all women)
figure out how to run the work themselves.Number of T-shirts went from 80 to 120 per worker and cost
went down and employees were happier.

If you are a leader, give your people more freedom than you
are comfortable with.Ask “what do
you think?” and then try whatever they suggest.

Have a suggestion box and the next level is to have the team
figure out what to do with the suggestions.

Recruiting and Hiring – the most high-leverage thing you can
do

We all think we’re good at hiring but we all do a poor
job.Did a study with11 college sophomores who watched
interview videos without the sound and asked them to assess the candidates and
they came up with the same evaluations as the trained professionals.They found we make snap judgments when
we meet people and then spend the rest of the interview justifying the first
impression.

Two rules:

--Don’t let the interviewers make the hiring decisions.Make them write up the interview and
give it to someone else to make decision.

--Don’t hire anyone who isn’t better than you in some way

Give your work meaning

Trust you people

Hire only people who are better than you

Find that thing that drives you.Ask the people around you what drives them. Keep doing this
again and again.

About Me

I'm a servant of Jesus Christ-in-training who makes a living by working as a school nurse--changing wet clothes and working to rid the world of head lice. Most of my free time is spent working to pack shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child and this is my story.